I’m imagining the apocalypse here, now. Armor, dripping green fire, not with demonic energies, but with the forces of death and decay. You’ll raise the dead to fight by your side. “Arise my Champions!” Shadow will be your light. Death will be your middle name. And Deathknight will be your class.

Deathknight will be everyone’s class. All of them, level 55, starting out in the Plaguelands. Not on pale horses, but deathchargers. Starting zone some floating city. My, that’ll be a blast on PvP servers. Anarchy without the limiting/conditioning effect of Humanity.

And in the grand Hello Kitty, Island Adventure, tradition, beneath that helm of evil, the brains behind the new contemporaries and protoges of Arthas, will be the pink ponytails of a happy gnome girl named Bubbles. Bubbles! (teehee!) Her boyfriend, Dotsutodeth, that adorable little green haired guy, Captain Stubing fringe, gnome Warlock, patron of the demonic forces on Azeroth.

Beneath their size 3 shoes they will crush and crunch through the bones and skulls of the innocents, trodden beneath soles of destruction, children of the Scourge and Burning Legion respectively, Deathknight and Warlock, on their way to the Cathedral District in Stormwind City, hoping to find Timmy and buy a small white kitten, and otherwise on their way to escort little orphans around the world, in hopes of getting a new pet. Awwww, how cute! Whiskers the Rat.

Unless the Lorecrafters of Blizzard have taken a permanent vacation, we can only hope Bubbles and Dotsutodeth have taken the children out to drop them off somewhere in the Plaguelands and feed Whiskers to a plaguehound. Nefarious is their other middle name, isn’t it? Because, dammit, otherwise the lore is starting to not make any sense anymore. WotLK is supposed to be a “return to lore” isn’t it? Not the chucking of the last of it into the circular file.

The bad guys are the good guys. And the good guys are the bad guys. And no evil is too evil, and no good too good, and if the Great Mother is fine with her charges becoming Tauren Deathknights, then there is only one cause, and that is to fight the ultimate evil, and that is Bush. No, Osama. No, Alec Baldwin? Arthas? Is there an ultimate evil anymore? And who’s anyone to judge anything anyhow. Anywho…

When Deathknights will be picking up orphans to take around the world and buy them ice cream, you’ve pretty much thrown Lore into the trashcan. This is the last season. Splash it all in rainbow colors. Make legendary weapons available at the weapon vendors in town. Recolor all the same armor sets, and make everything look shiny identical regardless of armor type, Swiftsteel, Dawnsteel, Wenolongercaresteel Shoulders. We’re in Shark Jumping territory now. Watch out, Fonzie! There’s a shark in the water! Help him, Chachi! Help him!

No Lore, no War, just Catass 1337zor characters, min-maxed to ultimate goodness, only one way to spec , revealed for all on WoWWiki and Elitist Jerks, you are specced properly, aren’t you noob? all wearing the same gear, doing the same stuff, all on the road to ARENA!!!!!!!1one!!!! and pay-per-play and microtransactions that rmt gold (must have epic mount to get more epic mounts now!)!

Pardon my French, but where the French is my World of Warcraft?

P.S. It’s been a while since I made a “rant” tag post. Glad that’s off my shoulders. :) But, c’mon. Are they seriously going to release WotLK allowing all races to become Deathknights? That’s just stupid. Regardless, you’ll know where you’ll find me. I’ll be up there in Northrend, breathing that crisp alpine air, hunting bad dragons and spiders, and otherwise enjoying the world immensely. And, yes, you bet, I’ll have a Deathknight too. Maybe a couple. On the Horde side I’ve already reserved the name Mortecai. Forsaken, of course. On the Alliance side all the “Mordicai” names were already taken. Will have to be something else. Honorus’ bad to the bone brother.

P.P.S. I just realized something here. The World of Warcraft MMORPG is kind of paralleling the Realtime Strategy Warcraft game. If you go from (I) Orcs & Humans, to (II) Tides of Darkness, to (II.5)Beyond the Dark Portal, to (III) Reign of Chaos, to (III.5) The Frozen Throne, you’re kind of following a similar path going from (I) World of Warcraft, to (II) The Burning Cursade, to (III) Wrath of the Lich King. Is this the end of the line for the franchise? Is Blizzard’s “next gen” mmorpg not Warcraft? Hmm. Protoss Templar. Now that’s a class I think I could buy into.

2 Responses to Skulls. Lots of them.

Tauren Deathknights. Is it as far-fetched as Caine’s nature boys allying themselves with the Forsaken, the most un-natural forms of life on Azeroth?

The whole Deathknight concept is rubbish, though, lore-wise.
I suppose Deathknights are former bad guys who have had their souls returned to them or something similar, and now want to strike down their old master, Arthas.

I suppose Alliance Deathknights still won’t be able to talk to Horde Deathknights, though.

My friends and I are jumping ship to Age of Conan for awhile. I hope to convince them to return for the next expansion but they were a little offended by the rating requirements on season 4. Even Death knights might not be enough to convince them to come back.